Planning, Prepping and Harvest

basic plan for my two biggest beds, the tallest crops are on
the North edge and the space between the beds is actually
larger than it appears.  I will do a shadow test first to
make sure the pole beans aren't going to shade out the
carrots and peppers

For lunch I walked over to the Japanese restaurant sporting a backpack stuffed with bags of Johnny's seed packets, my garden log, my Vegetable Growers Bible and a Johnny's catalog - The mission at hand was to plan my summer crops in the main EW beds.  I ordered my Hamachi sashimi, Unagi sushi and iced tea and got to work taking seed inventory, drawing the garden layout, listing what I wanted to grow and laying out where each crop would be located.  People were looking at me, I could feel their eyes... they were maybe suspicious of my bags of small white packets and my repeated action of peering inside with one eye closed to guestimate the seed count.

I left lunch an hour later with my plan drawn up and a short list of additional seeds to purchase.  I decided to try and eek one more round of beets, carrots and chard before it heats up too much.  I figure with some appropriate mulching I should be able to keep the soil cool enough to pull off another round.

I asked Vinessa to take a picture because
I was proud of the produce - thanks V!

When I got home I took 30 minutes to spread another 35 gallons of home made compost on the first EW bed, cultivate it in and water thoroughly.  The beds look great, I need to rig up some taller trellises for the tomatoes and poll beans, but I should be ready to sow seeds this weekend.

Vinessa stopped by to grab a harvest box of the usual stuff.  I also took the opportunity to thin my current spinach bed and beets to make a salad for Tonight (and a few more nights).  Compost is heating up well again and everything looks pretty good.  I could have spent the whole day out there.

Monster compost pile temp: 135°F

usual suspects with a bit more escarole than usual...